Ten Things I Learned At The Retirement Seminar

#1 - It's good to have income

#2 - It's good to be healthy

#3 - After 20 or so years in, your pension will have a cash-equivalent present value of around $1 million. Seriously.

#4 - The Thrift Savings Plan is the best thing to come out of Congress since Joe 'Double Barrel' Biden

#5 - There are all sorts of ways to minimize post-retirement taxation

#6 - There are also all sorts of ways to maximize inheritances to children

#7 - For example, financial gifts are not income and therefore not taxable to the recipient
  
#8 - I will postpone retirement for a few years longer than I'd been thinking (see #1)   

#9 - When I finally go, I think I'll use my lifetime federal fellowship to pursue a Ph.D

and,

#10 - Judging by the hundreds of people in the seminar, State will need a lot of new hires in a few years.


I'm not kidding about the hundreds of people. The sheer size of the crowd came as a shock. What's more, I think that over the years I may have worked for, or worked with, traveled with, or just met in passing, about half of them.

It was exactly the way I imagine a 30th High School reunion would be. There were some people I wanted to see and catch up with, a few I knew better than to start a conversation with, and many that I dodged because, while I sort of remembered them, I could not recall their names and wanted to avoid an awkward "oh, hi, how are you ... whoever you are ... and how have you been since we met in ... wherever it was?" moment.

One last retirement thing. After a few days of absorbing financial planning advice, I think that "Revocable Trust" would make an excellent title for my memoirs.